
n™ P 1 H 



THOMAS CORNWALLIS 






EARLY MARYLAND COLONISTS. 



EDWARD D. NEILL, D.D. 



SAINT PAUL, MINVESOTA. 



[Reprinted from the N. E. Historical vvi> GEf>EA.LOGiCA.L Register for April, 1889.] 







.•* 



BOSTON: 

PRESS OF DAVID CLAPP & SON, 

35 Bedford Street. 

1889. 



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In ;fxch 



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THOMAS CORNWALLIS AND THE EARLY 

MARYLAND COLONISTS. 

\ 

\ 

IN the church of Erwarton, the quiet Suffolk parish, near Ipswich, 
England, at the entrance of the north door, may be seen, on a 
flat stone, an inscription to the memory of Penelope, who came to 
Maryland as the youthful bride of Thomas Cornwallis, the leading 
spirit and chief councillor among the earliest colonists of that Prov- 
ince. A brass tablet, on the floor of the north aisle of the same 
church, marks the resting place of the remains of the Maryland coun- 
cillor's mother, while another slab within the chancel in Latin sen- 
tences tells the reader that the councillor's son Thomas was forty- 
five years the pious and laborious Rector of the Parish. 

Of all the founders of England's colonies in North America, too 
little has been known of Thomas Cornwallis, while few were more 
active in maintaining the principles of Magna Charta, and in laying 
the foundations of civilization. In the days of Richard the Second, 
when insurgents like Wat Tyler were hooting in the streets of Lon- 
don, his ancestor was sheriff, and old Stow in his " Survay of Lon- 
don " writes that in the church of Saint Martin in Vintry Ward 
was buried in 1384 "Thomas Cornwalles one of the Shirriffes." 

A descendant of the Sheriff was Sir John of Brome Hall, Suffolk, 
who was knighted for his bravery at Morlaix in Bretagne. His son, 
Sir Thomas, was a member of the Privy Council of Queen Mary, the 
Governor of Calais, and a short time before its surrender was re- 
called and made Comptroller of the Queen's Household. He built 
Brome Hall, a fine mansion, and Englishmen in their chagrin at the 
loss of Calais, improperly connecting his name with the transaction, 
in pasquinades asked — 

" Who built Brome Hall? Sir Thomas Cornwallis. 
How did he build it? By selling Calais. 
Sir Thomas Cornwallis what got you from Calais? 
Brome Hall, Brome Hall, as large as a palace." 

The second son of the founder of Brome Hall was Sir Charles, 
the grandfather of the Maryland councillor, a firm adherent of the 
Church of England, and sent by James the First as Ambassador to 
Spain. The father of the American colonist, Sir William, was a 
6on of the Ambassador, and respected for his virtue and talents, and 
the author of several essays. An uncle of the Maryland pioneer 
married Anna, daughter of Samuel Bevercott the postmaster of 
Scrooby, whose successor was William Brewster, subsequently the 
leader of the Puritans whicii landed at Plymouth Rock, Massa- 
chusetts. 

Thomas, of Maryland fame - md son of Sir William, 



knight, and when young was engaged in mercantile pursuits in Lon- 
don. Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, had obtained a pa- 
tent for the Province of Maryland, carved out of the fairest portion 
of old Virginia, but Baltimore was very poor, and to profit from his 
land-grant it was necessary to enlist some who had commercial 
credit. In a letter to Went worth, the Earl of Strafford, written in 
1633, he mentions that he had found a few willing to adventure their 
persons, and invest money in founding a colony. 

An organizatian was effected, and Leonard Calvert, a brother of 
the Proprietor, and of little force of character, was made Governor, 
while Thomas Cornwallis, of some means and with distinguished and 
influential relatives, was made the chief commissioner of the Mary- 
land colony. 

By holding out the inducement of good land and a pleasant cli- 
mate, a number of persons, chiefly poor and illiterate, embarked 
in the ship Ark, in 1633, for the Chesapeake Bay. Before they 
left the Thames, as required by law, they took an oath in which 
each said, "I do abjure as impious and heretical the damnable doc- 
trine and position that Princes which be excommunicated or de- 
prived by the Pope may be deposed or murdered by their subjects." 

The few gentlemen who accompanied the emigrants, sailed in a 
small pinnace named the Dove, and less than twenty of these reached 
the Province. Two were brothers of the Proprietor, two were sons 
of Sir John Winter, Knight, two were Jesuit missionaries, but the 
moneyed men were of the Church of England, Thomas Cornwallis and 
his partner, John Saunders, and the factor of the colony Justinian 
Snow. 

A few months after they settled at Saint Mary, Saunders who 
partly owned the Dove went to Boston to trade. Governor Win- 
throp, under date of August 29, 1634, wrote that "the Dove, a 
pinnace of about fifty tons, came from Maryland upon Potomack 
river, with corn to exchange for fish and other commodities. The 
Governor Leonard Calvert and two of the commissioners wrote to 
make offer of trade for corn, and the Governor of Virginia wrote also 
in their behalf, and one Captain Young wrote to make offer to deliver 
cattle here. Near all the company came sick hither, and the merchant 
died within a week after." 

The merchant was Saunders, by whose will Cornwallis became 
executor. A few years latter the factor of the Province, Justinian 
Snow, died. The Captain Young alluded to by Winthrop was a 
native of London, the first explorer of the Kennebec River, and in 
1636 was captured by the French, carried to Quebec, and from 
thence to France.* 

* Capt. Thomas Young was the son of Gregory Young, Grocer, of Cornhill, London, 
baptized im I6fb of August, 1-579, in St. Peter's Church, when six days old. On the 19th 
of On Thomas Young's sister Susan married Robert Evelyn, Armorer, son of 

George K I , -ml in 1592 George Evelyn, in manhood the commander of Kent Island, 
Maryland, *vii of Robert Evelyn 3 wife Susan, was born on Monday, the 31st of 

January. 



The advent of Baltimore's colony was deplored by the Virginians. 
Charles the First, without the slightes i -aid to their rights, had 
given to a court-favorite the shores ai ributaries of Chesapeake 
Bay. Palmer's Island in the Susquehanna River, before the charter 
of Maryland was sealed, had been a place of trade for Virginians. 
Here Edward Palmer of London, who- t was the mother of the 

poet Overbury, in his will made A.D. 1024:, provided, if all issue 
failed, for the founding of an institution to be known as " Academia 
Virginiensis et Oxoniensis." At the time that Governor ^Calvert 
and party arrived, William Clayborne, a member of a respectable 
Cumberland family, who had been Surveyor General of Virginia, with 
the aid of London merchants was largely engaged in trade with the 
Indians in the Chesapeake region, and determined not to surrender 
what he considered his rights under the laws of England. 

In the spring of 1635, Cornwallis proceeded to search for English 
traders who had no license under the seal of Maryland. He found 
Charles Harmar, a son of the Warden of Winchester, and a brother 
of the distinguished Greek scholar of Oxford University, trading in 
a small vessel of Clayborne's called the Long Tail, without a Mary- 
land license, and seized it. The owner was at Kent Island in Ches- 
apeake Bay, and he sent a boat under Ratcliff Warren and thirteen 
others to rescue his property. 

On the 23d of April, Warren met Cornwallis with two boats in 
Pocomoke River, and a fight took place resulting in the death of one 
Marylander and three Virginians. The first legislature of Maryland 
of which we have a record, met in January, 1638, and Cornwallis 
was the leading spirit. Governor Leonard Calvert was always weak 
and inefficient, and declared^ that the legislature had not the power 
to originate any laws, but C*u»welf resisted this idea and succeeded 
in obtaining a committee whose bills as reported were passed as laws. 
Heretofore every freeman was entitled to a seat in the body, if not 
in person, by proxy, but at this session it was enacted that two bur- 
gesses in each hundred elected by the freeman thereof, should be 
representatives. 

The next legislature met in February, 1639, and it was ordered 
that " Holy Church within this Province shall have all her rights 
and liberties." King James had defined the Church of England as 
the "Holy Mother Church," and expressed his determination "to 
maintain and defend the Holy Church and the rights and liberties of 
the same." The Charter of Maryland provided that all places of 
worship should be under the canons of the Church of England. 

The Jesuit missionaries were zealous and exemplary in their lives, 
but the laws of the Province hampered their movements, and another 
great difficulty was that more than three fourths of the first colonists 
were Protestants and not Roman C ; s. In letters to their 
Superior in England which have 3d, they write that they 

dwelt "in a country depending w holly mgland for subsistence, 



6 

where there is not, nor cannot be until England is re-united to the 
Church, any ecclesiastical discipline established, nor the Catholic 
religion publicly allowed. They also mention that three out of 
four persons in Maryland are heretics, and that the members of the 
Church of Rome "are for the most part poor." 

Cornwallis was really the only man of substance, paid the largest 
taxes, and had the greatest number of white servants. These serv- 
ants, indentured for a term of years, were bigoted, as ignorant 
people usually are, and hated the Pope, while their overseer, also a 
bigot, looked upon the Pope as the Infallible Vicegerent of Christ. 
There was a chapel near the Cornwallis plantation, where the serv- 
ants used to attend service, where Protestant books were used. 
One day, in the spring of 1638, some of these servants were in the 
overseer's house, listening to the reading of some printed sermons by 
a divine of the Church of England. The overseer lost his temper, 
and was abusive. The servants then complained to the Court of the 
indignities "daily suffered from William Lewis of St. Inegoes, who 
saith that our ministers are ministers of the Divell, and further saith, 
that those servants w'ch are under his charge shall not keep nor 
reade any book w'ch doth apperteine to our religion, within the house 
of the said William Lewis, to the great discomfort of those poor 
bondsmen who are under his subjection." The Court censured 
Lewis for his " contumelious speeches, and ill-governed zeal," and 
made him pay a fine. 

At this time there was in the Province, Andrew White, a Jesuit 
missionary, and Thomas White, a minister of the Church of England. 
In 1639 the latter was about sixty years old, and united in mar- 
riage John Hollis and Restituta Tue, servants of Cornwallis. This 
clergyman may have been the Thomas White, who in 1621 came to 
Virginia, described by the London Company as " a man of goo^l 
sufficiencies for learning," and of whom Margaret Brent in lGJLS 
told the Provincial Court that "lately deceased, out of the tender love 
and affection he bore unto her, intended, if he had lived, to have mar- 
ried her, and did by his last will give unto her his whole estate." 

The tobacco planters of Maryland felt that is was not good for man 
to be alone, and in the absence of better, married white servant maids. 
Sir Edmund Plowden, the grandson of the English jurist, before 
Baltimore obtained a grant of Maryland, secured a patent for lands 
around Delaware Bay. Plowden was quarrelsome, unprincipled, and 
unkind to his wife. After being confined in Fleet Prison, London, 
he engaged a number of servants to go with him to Nova Albion. 
He stopped in Virginia, and in February, 1642, Ann Fletcher a 
lame maid, and two sisters Jane and Eleanor Stevenson, left his ser- 
vice, came over to Maryland, where, in 1644, Eleanor became the 
wife of William Brainthwaite, a" loving kinsman of Lord Baltimore." 
A Maryland councillor also sold one of his servants to Francis Brooke 
for a wife. 



Among the first sale of negvo servants is that made by Richard 
Bennett, when a Virginia merchant, to Thomas Cornwallis. About 
the year 1643 he sold two Africans for fifty pounds sterling. From 
that period black laborers increased. Bennett after this was made 
Governor of Maryland by Cromwell. He was the nephew of Ed- 
ward Bennett a London merchant, who had been Deputy Governor 
of the English traders at Delft, Holland. 

While Bennett did not shrink from selling negroes, he sent a 
letter to Boston, by his brother Philip, asking that some Puritan 
ministers might be sent to preach the "pure gospel " to the non-con- 
formists in Nansemond county, Virginia. After a few years these 
dissenters moved to the vicinity of Annapolis, Maryland. Subse- 
quently a grandson of Bennett owned thirteen hundred negro slaves, 
and lies buried at Bennett's Point, Queen Anne County, Maryland. 

The contrast between the pecuniary condition of the Calverts, in 
1640, and Thomas Cornwallis was very great. Cecil Calvert, Lord 
Baltimore, was obliged to depend upon his father-in-law, Lord 
Arundel, for the subsistence of his wife and children, while his 
brother Leonard, the Governor of Maryland, had little more than 
his every day apparel. 

Thomas Cornwallis, however, to use his own words : " By God's 
blessing upon his endeavours, had acquired a settled and comfortable 
subsistence, having a dwelling house furnished with plate, linen 
hangings, bedding, brass, pewter, and all manner of household stuff 
worth at least a thousand pounds, about twenty servants, a hundred 
cattle, a great stock of swine and goats, some sheep and horses, a 
new pinnace of about twenty tons besides a shallop and other small 
'boats." 

There is an error widely prevalent in Maryland and Virginia that 
the brick used in the construction of the early buildings was brought 
from England, which would have been as poor business policy as 
" carrying coals to New Castle." When the Maryland colonists stopped 
at the entrance of James River, the Governor Harvey of Virginia 
tendered them the use of brick made there. Governor Berkeley's 
house near Jamestown was built of brick burned in the neighbor- 
lood. The church at Jamestown, now in ruins, built after 1673, 
and the magazine also, were built of bricks made in the colony. It 
s not, then, surprising, in view of the erection of a new mansion 
ot far from the Indian town of Potopaco, on the Potomac, now 
Down as Port Tobacco, that Cornwallis should have contracted 
with one Cornelius Canada, formerly a servant of Governor Green, 
for more than fifty thousand well burned bricks. 

| In the year 1641, Cornwallis visited London, and found its citi- 
zens greatly stirred. Charles the First, personally amiable, by a 
vacillating policy had lost the confidence of the solid men of the 
city. The Earl of Strafford, the friend of Lord Baltimore, had been 
mpeached for treason, and by the cowardice of the King was executed. 



!. 

Cornwallis was not inclined to fanaticism either in politics or 
religion, but he thought that it was the duty of the King to execute 1 
the legislation of Parliament. Lunsford, an outlaw and profligate]' 
but a hater of " round-heads," was now a pet of the King anq 1 
knighted, but subsequently wandered to Virginia, and a monument 
to his memory may be seen in the church yard at Williamsburg. 

In December Cornwallis had returned to Maryland, in a vesse, 
commanded by a well known captain, Richard Ingle, and the nexf 
Spring was in the legislature resisting the arbitrary course of Gov-i 
ernor Calvert. After war had been declared between the King anr? 
Parliament, Lord Baltimore issued an order for the re-organization 1 
of the Province, and sent over new commissions for the councillors,' 
which omitted a* clause of the old, "saving my allegiance to thr 
crown of England." In the Assembly of 16^2, Cornwallis refused 1 
to take the oath of councillor, but performed all the duties of a gooc- 
citizen, and the next year was made leader of a force against the, 1 
Susquehanna Indians, and the stockade at Palmer's Island was calleo 
Fort Conquest. The writer of " Nova Albion " mentions that Cap-' 
tain Cornwallis, "that noble, right valiant and politic soldier killeci 
with fifty-three of his raw and tired Marylanders twenty nint ; 
Indians." 

During the summer of 1642, Captain Ingle sailed from the Chesf 
apeake for London, with a valuable cargo, but during a storm 1 1 1 fe ' 
ship sprung a leak, and with torn sails he reached Boston, and after 
the vessel was repaired proceeded on his voyage, and when he en- 
tered the Thames, learned that the King was at Oxford and at war* 
with Parliament. In February, 1G43, under a commission from 1 
Parliament he appeared in the waters of Accomac County, Virginiar 
and when the authorities asked him to come ashore he replied 
he would with his "curtelaxe" and cut off the head of an) 
one who would attempt his arrest. In April, he appeared in the 
Potomac River, and told some of the settlers that Prince Ruperjj' 
was "a traitor and a rogue, and if he had him on board of his shia' 
he would whip him at the capstan." There was a good deal of swag." 
ger about Ingle, and it is possible that if he were now alive hr 
would not refuse a glass of Accomac peach brandy. 

The Provincial authorities were shocked by Ingle's language, an(r 
ordered his arrest for treason. While Cornwallis knew that Inglf 
had not bridled his tongue, yet he was then in sympathy with th£ 
opponents of the King, and, to use his own words, "to show his 
affection to Parliament," found means to free Ingle, his ship an 
cargo. The acting Governor of Maryland was indignant, arrestee 
Cornwallis, and brought him before the Court, where he was declare 
guilty, and fined the highest amount allowed bylaw. 

It became expedient for Cornwallis to go to England in Ingle' 
ship, and he arrived before John Hampden the patriot was mortally 
wounded while leading; his regiment. 



The relatives of Cornwallis were not extreme partisans, although 
some were in the confidence of the King. In August, 1643, Parlia- 
ment authorized Richard Ingle in the ship Reformation to cruise in 
Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, and Cornwallis entrusted him 
with goods for trading purposes. In February, 1645, the Reforma- 
tion appeared at the mouth of St. Inigos Creek, and conspiring with 
some of the servants of the absent Cornwallis sacked his house. 
When he came back to London, he charged Cornwallis with being a 
malignant, as a royalist was called. After a tedious dispute, Ingle 
made some reparation. 

It was not until the year 1652 that Cornwallis came back to 
Maryland, and displayed his wonted energy aod public spirit. While 
visiting in England, he fell in love with Penelope, the daughter of 
John Wiseman of Tyrrels in county Essex, and in 1657, when she 
was twenty-one years of age, she became his wife, and the young bride 
accompanied him to the wilds of America : but in two years he went 
back to England and became a merchant in London, and it is prob- 
able that the house known as Maryland Point, Essex, now in the 
suburbs of that city, was built by him on lands leased of Thomas 
Bland, whose relatives were tobacco planters in Virginia. Advanced 
in years he retired to the ancestral home in Suffolk, and in 1676 
died at Burnham Thorpe. His wife survived him many years, and 
on the slab at Erwarton Church to which allusion has been made, is 
the following inscription : 

" Here Lyeth the Body of 

Penelope Daughter of John 

Wiseman Esq r , and wife of 

Thomas Cornwallis Esq r 

son of William Cornwallis 

y e younger, K't. By whom 

she had 10 children, 4 sons, 

William, Thomas, John, and John, 

& 6 daughters Frances, Penelope, 

Penelope, Katherine, Penelope, 

& Mary. She died Nov r 7 th 

Anno Dom. 1693 

Aged 57." 

Her second son, Thomas, was born in July, 1661, and in boy- 
hood went to the Charter House School. After passing through a 
college course of study, he became a clergyman, and the last forty- 
five years of his life ministered in the church where the Parkers, the 
ancestors of his maternal grandfather, had worshipped for many gene- 
rations. The tourist who now enters Erwarton Church can read the 
following : 



10 



" Dejicimur non perditus. 

Hie jacet sepultus Thomas Cornwallis 

Hujus ecclesiae per aunos 45 Rectorfidelis, 

* * * qui per uxorem suam Mariam, 

filiam Roberti Cock de Wherstead, Generosi, 

Mulierorum prudeutissimam, cum qua 

Connubis per annos 44, amantissime vixit. 

Prolem habuit numerosam, quorum omnium 

Supersuut filius Gulielmus et filia 

Anna, nupta Joauni Gaillard de Ludwig, 

Armig. Obiit 11 die Julii 

Auno Dom. 1731 

-Etati 70 

Abi lector, et aemulari." 



